Red Adam's Lady Read online

  “I kissed a girl in Paris city,

  Before I rode away,

  She was a choice and gamesome kitty,

  Plump little—”

  With a jangle of snapped strings and rending wood the lute burst upon his skull, and he sat blinking, collared with the instrument’s belly and bleeding from several scratches. Julitta, white-faced and breathing herkily, let go the lute’s neck and backed a pace. He lurched up, clawing at the wreckage and snarling threats.

  “Most musically appropriate,” declared Red Adam’s voice. He thrust his friend one-handed upon his bench. “Reckon yourself fortunate, Reynald. She reformed my way of life with a stool.” He broke away shards of wood. “Best conform courteously to my lady’s requirements.”

  “Require—it’s a belt she requires!”

  Julitta waited on her lord’s reactions with righteous anger stiffening her spine. Sir Bertram had come to her side. Beyond him Constance lifted horrified eyes. Knights, soldiers, minstrels and servants goggled all about.

  “You’re doubly fortunate, Reynald, that she reached you first,” Red Adam added gently, “for I’d have been less inspired.” He ripped the last fragment from his friend’s neck and turned to his wife. Braced for his wrath, she was disconcerted to recognize approval in his face. “Oblige me by retiring, my lady,” he requested, and she could escape with honor.

  She sat on the bed’s edge, listening to the gale’s violence, and stared at the candleflame leaping and guttering as drafts swooped round the rattling shutter. She wondered just how much harm she had done herself. It depended on the regard Red Adam had for his friend. She knew what her uncle’s reaction would have been, and she was entirely at her husband’s mercy. No man could expect her to accept that drunken lout’s insults, and Red Adam had at least upheld her in public, a forbearance she had not looked for.

  Remembering another aspect of his character, she shivered and scrambled out of her clothes and into the bed, where she assured herself that she was a fool to let it trouble her. She had known what he was before he constrained her to marry him, what every Lorismond had been, and it would be cause for marvel if Thyra proved the only one bearing the fruit of last January’s indiscretions. Yet the fury still curdled in her belly. It was fury for the girl’s insolence; she could not be jealous of Red Adam’s favors. Constance’s barbed shaft would not easily pull out.

  The door opened, fluttering the candleflame, and her husband came in. He barred the door and stood over her, his face harsh in that erratic light. She braced herself.

  “I apologize for Reynald,” he said abruptly. “He’ll not offend that way again, if I have to ration his wine.”

  “What set him against me so, except that I saw him in his beastliness?” she asked, relaxing.

  He shrugged. “That’s reason enough for him. He resents my marrying unprofitably, against his advice, and turning sober. Also he reckons that a wife should tolerate whatever her husband chooses to put upon her, including his friends’ abuse. It’s an interesting view of marriage, but not for a man with a vixen to conciliate.”

  “Do you expect a vixen to tolerate his conduct, my lord?”

  He smiled ruefully and perched on the bed’s edge by her feet. “I can’t be rid of him as easily as I was of Stephen and Piers.”

  “Who—you mean your fellow raptors of Monday night?”

  “Old friends from the tourney circuit. After being restrained from battering down your door, and informed that marriage meant an end to wine and wenches at my charges, one word led to another, and they departed at first light next morning.”

  “You will not lack friends on those terms when you backslide.”

  “My intentions at the moment are excellent, but the flesh is exceedingly weak,” he conceded amicably. “Yet you opened my skull to thought with your stool, and high time. There’s more to lordship than wine and wenches, though Reynald will not agree.”

  “Not so long as they are freely available.”

  He shifted his buttocks from the box-bed’s edge, nearer her feet. “True. But it’s hard to deny him. He saved my life.”

  “How?”

  “Cried warning of a knife at my back in a dark alley. Then I had Lord Maurice’s summons, and promised Reynald fair provision as seneschal over some estate of mine.”

  A promise he now regretted, Julitta recognized, but must fulfil. She recognized also, in surprise, how great a compliment he paid her discretion and good sense by this confidence, and shut her teeth on condemnation of his rashness.

  “There’s more to lordship than wine and wenches,” he repeated soberly. “Between campaigns I’ve been bounding about England like a flea. I’ve dismissed a seneschal and two bailiffs; another got my scent and beat me over the Welsh border with the estate strongbox. We found him with his throat slit, but not, to my sorrow, the strongbox.”

  “A sore grief!”

  “Sore indeed, so many hands dipped into my coffers and I scratching every penny together to pay a hard relief.”

  “So that was why, this afternoon—”

  “I was serving fair warning that I can read and cast accounts. Oh, there’s been mismanagement and muddle, but here under my kinsman’s own eye little peculation. Sir Bertram’s honest. But to give Reynald such a charge, no. I dare not trust him with authority outside my sight.”

  “And he has set his heart on your estate by Bristol?”

  “You miss nothing. As long as the threat from Flanders hangs in the wind, and the rebels hold out in Leicester, I’ve reason to keep him by me. Bear with him as you can; he’s only fit company for a like-minded lecherous sot.” He lifted one eyebrow, a trick of his that the candlelight exaggerated to weirdness.

  “Then restrain him from ravishing my maid-servant.”

  Both eyebrows lifted. “That ninny? Hell’s Teeth, what’s the harm if he does?”

  “Harm—that lout forcing a helpless maid?” she protested indignantly, sitting up in her smock heedless of the covers sliding to her waist.

  “Do her good,” he declared callously. “She’ll have something real to wail about.”

  “You monster!”

  “All the bitch is any use for.”

  “Yes, the only use you’d have for a servant girl would be to make a whore of her!” she blazed, memory of the fair girl weighted with his sin stinging her to indiscretion. “Like that wench Thyra who is carrying your child!”

  “Thyra? Oh, the towhead. She claims it’s mine?”

  “You deny it?”

  “It could be,” he admitted shamelessly. “Though it’s as likely to be Reynald’s, or any man’s. It needn’t grieve you. It was before we wedded, and done with.”

  “Now you have a maiden to debauch for your sport instead?”

  “There’s only one maiden for me now,” he replied, and reached a hand to her. She recoiled, flung back the covers and twisted off the bed. She was at the door, tugging at the bar, when he seized her.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Do you reckon I’ll stay in the same room with you?”

  “You’ll not run from it in your smock to make a public jest of our dispute.”

  He wrenched her away from the door. She dragged back and struck at his face, and he caught her wrist, hauled her to him and embraced her, pinning her arms. She kicked at his shins, but bare toes made no impression; he swung her from her feet. She writhed desperately, and they collided with the bed and fell across it. A triumphant kiss flattened her lips against her teeth, and for an appalling instant her body flamed response to the male strength of his. Then he loosed her, rolled to his feet and stood breathing jerkily.

  “Mother of God!” he whispered. “I came near forcing you—after I promised—Julitta, I’m sorry!”

  She twisted over, snatched the dagger from under her pillow, and snarled, “Keep off!”

  “You’ll not need it. I won’t touch you. In God’s Name, Julitta, don’t be afraid of me.”

  “Afraid? Merciful Savior, I l
oathe you!”

  “That’s evident,” he said wryly. Rain drummed on the shutter, and water dripped near it. He moved to thrust at the boarding, and she gulped and scrubbed her smock sleeve across her eyes. He spoke over his shoulder. “But you don’t much like any man, do you?”

  “No!”

  He turned and leaned on the bed-foot, the crooked smile twisting his mouth again. The candle alternately lighted his face to a harsh mask and softened it into shadow. “Was your father the same breed as his brother?” he asked disconcertingly.

  Agreement started to her lips, and then she caught back betrayal. “He was my father. He loved me.” And that was truth; in his way he had loved her, that morose man with no patience in him, burdened with a motherless girl he could not provide for.

  “I’m sure of it. And then your uncle, that faceful of teeth he’d have given you to, the Ladies’ Delight, and now Reynald—and me. I reckon you’ve reason.” He straightened, and came round the bed. “I understand what I must contend against. And I know now it’s blood in your veins and not buttermilk.” He lifted the bar and went out.

  The door shut. The wind shrieked and worried at the keep. Julitta twisted over, buried her face in the pillow and wept.

  6

  The gale’s wrath was dying in random gusts that tore at garments and set the horses snorting and sidling. It hunted gray clouds over the sky and drove them across the sun’s-face; shadows and sunshine raced over the headland, and the sodden grass dulled and glittered alternately. Julitta, sullen-faced, followed Red Adam over the slippery turf. “You’ll ride with me,” he had announced, taking her hand in a grip there was no denying. Nudges, whispers and stares had already informed her that all Brentborough knew of last night’s quarrel; ears must have been flapping close to their chamber door. Her husband’s company was more tolerable than facing mockery and gloating alone.

  “You’ll ride with me every morning,” he told her over his shoulder.

  “Why?”

  “Your chance to curse me to your heart’s easing with no witnesses to tattle,” he suggested cheerfully, and by that permission paralyzed her tongue. He reigned his mount back to close in beside her, and smiled into her resentful face. “I shan’t beat you, so you can put by defiance.”

  He had read too clearly her dread of violence and her refusal to be cowed by it. “I’ll prove you first,” she said bitterly.

  “I’ve a sympathy for you,” he said unexpectedly, “because as a boy I too was thrust remediless into a hateful life. But maids of your station never have any choice in where they wed. You know how your uncle would have bestowed you, and without conceit, I’ve used you better than Tusky Gerald would.”

  “You are intolerably magnanimous,” she retorted, “and I’d have hated him worse than you.”

  His face alight with mirth, he reached to close a hand on hers. “My truthful lass, you rejoice me. Next, I’ll aim to raise myself above your dear uncle in your esteem. A difficult goal, I’ll own—”

  She bit at her lip, but too late; it twitched into a smile. “You’ve achieved it,” she retorted, trying to retrieve the lapse. “Just.”

  “That’s encouragement!” He grinned, and caught her hand to his lips before she knew what he was about. His jesting stabbed through the mail of resentment that protected her misery from assault. She jerked away, her hand closing into a fist, and he lifted his mount into a canter, slowed to negotiate the ruins among the tussocks, and walked out towards the dizzy brink.

  Cold salt, uphurled from the turmoil below, tingled on her skin. A sword of sunlight cleft the clouds and struck its rage to white splendor. The green waves marched in, shattered water glittered with rainbows, rock fangs darkly glistened through, and the wind snatched at her clothes, lifted her hair and beat the breath back between her teeth. Gulls swung shrieking round and over, riding the updrafts, and Red Adam yelled exultantly through the clamor. The wind tossed the words to Julitta, verses from the twenty-ninth Psalm.

  “It is the Lord, that commandeth the waters: it is the glorious God, that maketh the thunder. It is the Lord, that ruleth the sea!”

  The horses tossed their heads and rolled white-rimmed eyeballs. Julitta, tightening control with hands and voice on her undependable palfrey, glanced aside at the wild creature joyously misusing Holy Writ, his hair straining stiffly back from his face. Full sunlight dazzled her; the clouds were shredding into tatters and the wide sea’s leaden green was brightening to blue.

  “Hell’s Teeth!” Red Adam leaned forward, shading his eyes with one hand. “There’s a ship!”

  She followed his pointing arm. Northeast, out upon that dazzle, she was driving in fast. Under a rag of close-reefed sail, she dipped and lurched crabwise, fighting southward with wind and sea on her larboard quarter thrusting her at the cliffs. The waves clutched at her, hurling spray across her poop, but she shook free every time, fighting buoyant as a gull over their crests. Julitta, tensely watching her borne closer and closer, guessed how those aboard must look with dread on the waiting cliffs and repeated an Ave under her breath for them.

  “If they’ve fought through last night’s storm they’ve earned safe harborage,” her husband commented, and started his mount along the cliff to watch more easily. She followed, her fingers gripping the reins in futile sympathy.

  The ship was close enough inshore for clear view: longer and narrower than the squat Channel cogs she knew, part-decked fore and aft with a tarpaulin over her well. She could see the helmsman braced to the tiller’s kick, lashed with spray by every wave crest as it rose in menace and then slid under the keel, tiny figures hauling on the sheets to win as much southing as they could from the straining sail, the lookout crouching against the stempost carved to the likeness of a bird, a huddle of dark shapes under the break of the poop. Regular gouts of water indicated frantic bailing along her lee side. They walked their horses along the headland’s curve, watching the struggle they could do nothing to aid.

  “If they can only win round the point,” Julitta whispered. Red Adam said nothing, and his face showed only an indifferent interest. She demanded savagely, “Do you care nothing?”

  He did not heed her, nor show that he had heard. An eddy of wind, recoiling from the cliff’s face, caught the ship. She lurched and staggered, the next wave drove green water across her poop, and then she lifted again and steadied to her course. For a heart’s beat Julitta thought the rocks would have her, and then she shrieked with triumph; the ship had clawed past the point and could run for the harbor in the estuary.

  “They’ve done it! Praise God! They’re safe!”

  “Dear God!” Red Adam’s voice ripped through her delight. “It’s high tide! The reef—they’ll run full on it!”

  He was wrenching at his cloak brooch. As the ship, clearing the headland, swung to her new course that would hurl her onto the rocks that thrust from the lower, southern headland, he rose in the stirrups with a piercing yell and swung his cloak overhead in a sweep that startled his horse into plunging. The wind whipped away his shout so that it was unlikely any aboard heard it, but his signal was seen; an arm gestured, and pale spots of upturned faces acknowledged it. He swirled the cloak widely, and the wind spread it into wings; then with imperative arm and nodding head he signed to them to take the inside passage under the cliff where they stood. The steersman flung up an answering arm, and the wind bore his shout, hoarser and deeper than a gull’s cry, to their ears. The ship ran shuddering through the smother of foam at the river’s mouth, and under the cliff’s lee, where she lost the wind. Men scurried. A complicated maneuvre, and four pairs of oars were out. Like a many-legged pond creature she crawled up the safe channel for the shelving beach where the fishing boats lay above the tide-line.

  “Praise God!” Red Adam ejaculated, swung his mount about on his haunches and touched spurs to his sides. Julitta scuttled after him across the headland, cantered between the castle outbuildings scattering scullions, brats, pigs and poultry, over the drawbridge
and down the Arnisby track. Mud spattered. The carrier, leading his string of half a dozen pack-horses across the long wooden bridge, recoiled in alarm, but they reined aside to let him pass, and Red Adam dismissed the apology he attempted with a wave of his hand. More soberly they cantered along the straggling street to the huddle of fishers’ cottages at its end, by the pebbly strand where most of the populace was watching the stranger work in, with a communal disgruntled expression which swiveled towards their lord.

  “Devil melt them, why are they all scowling as though I’d kicked their teeth in?” demanded Red Adam.

  “You’ve cheated them. Wrecks are rich pickings,” Julitta murmured.

  “Hell’s Teeth, are they ravens to pick dead men’s bones?” he exclaimed righteously, and then added, even more righteously, “Yes, and wreck rights are lord’s rights.”

  “If he gets up first,” Julitta agreed, chuckling despite herself.

  “I’d have to rise early, I see,” he said grimly, thrusting through the resentful throng to the shingle as the vessel grounded on crunching pebbles and the seamen swung overboard to heave her higher up the beach on the crest of the tide. The steersman, relinquishing his post at the tiller, threw up an arm and shouted a greeting in rough French, recognizing his benefactor and deceived by his shabby attire.

  “Ho, friend Fire-in-the-thatch! Our thanks for your signal!”

  In the shocked hush a child’s voice squeaked, “But that is my lord himself!”